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The Daily Tar Heel

Smile, you’re on camera: Installing dashboard cameras in police cars will help to provide an infallible record of incidents

The decision by the Orange County Board of Commissioners to outfit more sheriff’s office vehicles with dashboard cameras addresses an important need for public safety and officer accountability.

Dashboard cameras can often provide crucial evidence that officer and witness testimony cannot.

Yet disturbingly, only one dashboard camera currently exists in the entire fleet of sheriff’s office patrol vehicles.

Now, there will be 51. The board’s approval allows for the purchase of 50 new cameras for $295,700.

Better still, all of the money comes from grants, which do not have to be repaid.

Two relatively recent cases illustrate this point and the need for increased dashboard cameras.

The first example is the tragic death of junior Courtland Smith, president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

Dashboard camera video captured events just prior to and immediately after the moment police said Archdale Police Department officer Jeremy Paul Flinchum shot and killed Smith.

Although a Randolph County judge has ruled not to release this evidence, the dashboard camera video almost certainly sheds greater light on the murky details surrounding this tragedy.

The second example is this past summer’s confrontation between Chapel Hill police and local business owner Charles Brown. Brown was temporarily detained — although innocent — due to a case of mistaken identity by the officers.

Brown and the officers disagreed about the nature of the detainment and its length. Brown claimed he was treated poorly and held for almost an hour by the officers.

An internal review by the town found no wrongdoing on the part of the officers.

More importantly, the review suggested more dashboard cameras, saying they “would provide protection that would benefit both officers and citizens.”

Both officers and the people they confront are fallible. The objective lens of a dashboard camera serves to keep both parties accountable.

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